University of Southampton

Southampton traces its origins to the Hartley Institution, opened in 1862 from a bequest by Henry Robinson Hartley. It passed through several forms before Queen Elizabeth II granted it a royal charter in 1952, the first university charter of her reign. Today it is a research-intensive member of the Russell Group on the south coast of England.

Computer science at Southampton sits inside Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), a single department that keeps computing and electronic engineering under one roof. That pairing shapes the degree, and students move easily between software, hardware, and the systems that join them. The department has particular strength in web and data technologies. Southampton is one of the birthplaces of Web Science, the study of the web as a social and technical system, and the Web Science Research Initiative was launched here in 2006. Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, joined ECS as a professor in 2004 to work on the Semantic Web alongside Nigel Shadbolt. Research also runs deep in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cyber security.

For a computer science student, ECS is a large department with its own labs and close ties to industry through placement years. That scale shows up in the range of third-year options, which include computer vision, natural language processing, embedded systems, and game design.

Admissions

The typical offer for the three-year BSc Computer Science is A*AA including mathematics at grade A or above, with General Studies and Critical Thinking excluded. Applicants also need GCSE English language and mathematics at grade 4/C or better. No prior programming experience is required, and applicants without A-level mathematics can enter through a foundation year.